Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Rapid Deployments To Wildfires Experiment (Radfire): Observations From The Fire Zone, Craig Clements, Neil Lareau, David Kingsmill, Carrie Bowers, Christopher Camacho, Richard Bagley, Braniff Davis

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

The Rapid Deployments to Wildfires Experiment (RaDFIRE) was a meteorological field campaign aimed at observing fire–atmosphere interactions during active wildfires. Using a rapidly deployable scanning Doppler lidar, airborne Doppler radar, and a suite of other instruments, the field campaign sampled 21 wildfires from 2013 to 2016 in the western United States. Observations include rotating convective plumes, plume interactions with stable layers and multilayered smoke detrainment, convective plume entrainment processes, smoke-induced density currents, and aircraft in situ observations of developing pyrocumulus. Collectively, these RaDFIRE observations highlight the range of meteorological phenomena associated with wildfires, especially plume dynamics, and will provide a …